Much like a historian or ethnographer, Fallah works with a diverse mix of local communities and groups to collect material evidence of their private and public lives and transform them into artworks. Portraits are composed using objects and textiles the subjects deem significant, to develop an exploration of the ways that identities are formed out of emotional associations with–and nostalgia for–specific products, objects, and places. Perfect Strangers re-interprets and gives new weight to everyday objects as active participants in the construction of self-identification. Fallah’s compositions, both fluid and fragmented, embrace the moments when things do not quite align, and gives the work a sense of honesty that reveals the complex factors of identity which cannot be expressed through a simple corporeal rendering. Inviting the community and its objects into the Artist Lab, Fallah articulates a sense of regional identity that is ambiguous, yet informed by the perspective of an international artist who calls the Los Angeles metro area home.

In her exhibition, Wang presents sculptures, drawings, prints, and new video work. Using elements of the earth–including mineral oxides, chemical substances, precious metals, geological formations, and light–Wang sees her work as a method of invention and discovery of alternative temporalities. Additionally, Wang presents web-based work hidden within our website: www.18thstreet.org.

Kinetic forms. Gravity is applied in Wang’s work as an annealing force. Memory is a physical sensation imprinted on the mind mass of flesh. Fossilized stone, several million years old, is subject to gravity in the same way as are dancers or tennis balls. Its unpredictable velocity makes tracking impressions difficult but not impossible. Reoriented from a scientific context toward an aesthetic one, Wang’s explorations reveal the wonders of quotidian physical phenomena. Presence and projection at once. Her work combining spatial and time-based media evolves from a deeply personal inquiry into the history of science, expanding from that scope of individual human time to a vast, geological frame of existence.